Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical communications system. It applies to optical telecommunications and in particular to the production of optical buses.
Description of the Background
An optical network is already known to which the connection of a speaker requires not only a receiver and a transmitter, but also two optical couplers, which respectively serve to sample information transmitted by the optical line of said optical network to bring same to the receiver and inject into said optical line information from the transmitter.
This known optical network suffers from the disadvantage that the losses caused by the couplers limit the number of speakers and consequently the size of the network.
In addition, the following documents disclose:
(1) Cascaded carrier depletion optical switches based on InP/GaInAsP waveguides, J.A. Cavalilles et al, Reports of ECOC`90, pp. 213-216,
(2) Single mode polarization insensitive GalnAsP/InP total internal reflection optical switch, M. Renaud et al, Reports of ECOC`90, pp. 217-220,
(3) Synchronization of passive access nodes in very high speed optical packet networks, T.M. Martison, Reports of ECOC`90, pp. 473-476,
(4) InP monolithically integrated passive access node switches for very high speed optical loop, M. Erman et al., Reports of ECOC`90, pp. 1015-1018,
communications networks along which are placed passive access nodes having optical switches. The latter inter alia suffer from the disadvantage of extracting from said communications networks a relatively high lighting power when used as detectors.